Music of the Russian Revolution

The year is 1917, the end of World War I is in sight, but Russia has been removed from the war and is undergoing a huge transition from the Russian Empire into the Soviet Union, replacing Russia's monarchy with the world's first Communist state.

If you were attending the concert halls during this turbulent period, you would have been hearing a lot of Scriabin who was seen as a musical champion both leading up to the October Revolution and for years after.

Even though he died two years before the Revolution, had he lived through it, he would have had to pick a complicated path through the political minefield in the decades ahead that many composers faced.

Composers like Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov and of course Shostakovich were all affected by the rising Iron Curtain; some stayed but many didn't.

We'll talk to Professor Marina Frolova-Walker, author ofRussian Music and Nationalism from Glinka to Stalin and Stalin's Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics and Professor in Music History at Cambridge University, and we'll also hear from pianist and Russophile Peter Donohoe, joint silver medal winner and 1982 Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, about the changes in music before, during and after the Revolution.

Researcher: Andrew FordProducer: Rosa Gollan

Supporting Information

Two events 400 years apart, joined together by the thread of radical change. In 1517 Martin Luther overturned settled belief with his defiant '95 theses'. In 1917 the Bolsheviks stormed the capital to herald Communist conquest. RN revisits these two upheavals that have left deep and lasting legacies on the modern world, and ask—what do we know, what should we know, and what have we learnt?